As a sales rep for Tier 2 and 3 suppliers to original equipment manufacturers starting in the mid 1980s, I remember trying to comply with the JIT and SPC requirements of my customers. I took an intensive 100-hour class in 1993 to get my certificate in Total Quality Management to be prepared for the future, but saw TQM fizzle out as the decade ended because it wasn’t emaced by top management of companies.
Miller outlined how we got to the present concept of lean starting with the quality circles of the 1960s, leading to the Kepner-Tregoe methodology of work simplification in the 1970s, the Just-in-Time and Statistical Process Control programs of the 1980s, the Total Quality Management philosophy of the 1990s, and now the Lean Six Sigma culture of the 21st century.
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